Understanding Handwriting, Abbreviations, Dates and More Dan Poffenberger, AG® British Research Specialist ~ Family History Library
[email protected] Introduction Searching English records can be daunting enough when you are simply worrying about the time period, content and availability of records. A dive into a variety of records may leave you perplexed when you consider the handwriting styles, Latin, numbering systems, calendar changes, and variety of jurisdictions, record formats and abbreviations that may be found in the records. Objectives The objective of this course is to help you better understand: • Handwriting and Abbreviations • Latin • Numbers and Money • Calendars, Dates, Days, Years • Church of England Church Records Organization and Jurisdictions • Relationships Handwriting and Abbreviations Understanding the handwriting is the most important aspect to understanding older English records. If you can’t read it, you’re going to have a very hard time understanding it. While the term ‘modern English’ applies to any writing style after medieval times (late 1400’s), it won’t seem like it when you try reading some of it. More than 90% of your research will involve one of two primary English writing scripts or ‘hands’. These are ‘Secretary hand’ which was primarily in use from about 1525 to the mid-1600’s. Another handwriting style in use during that time was ‘Humanistic hand’ which more resembles our more modern English script. As secretary and humanistic hand came together in the mid-1600’s, English ‘round hand’ or ‘mixed hand’ became the common style and is very similar to handwriting styles in the 1900’s. But of course, who writes anymore? Round or Mixed Hand Starting with the more recent handwriting styles, a few of the notable differences in our modern hand are noted here: ‘d’ – “Eden” ‘f’ - “of” ‘p’ - “Baptized’ ss’ – “Edward Hussey” ‘u’ and ‘v’ – become like the ‘u’ and ‘v’ we know today.